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Part IX : World Tour - Osho flies to Kathmandu, Nepal
On 3 January 1986, Osho flies to Kathmandu, where he stays at
the Soalti Oberoi Hotel, and immediately begins press interviews
and discourses. Sannyasins arrive from around the world to sit
with him.
Your disciples who came to receive you at the airport displayed
their placards reading `In the line of Buddha, a new Buddha is
welcome.' Which means they consider you as new Buddha. Do you
consider yourself as a reincarnation of Buddha, or new Buddha?
No. It is true that Nepal is the land of Buddha, and India has
not been right to claim itself the land of Buddha. That privilege
and prestige belongs to Nepal.
And `buddha' simply means the awakened one. It is not a personal
name.
I am not anybody's incarnation. I am myself. But I am as much
awakened as it is possible for human being to be.
So it is perfectly right if somebody calls me a `buddha.' There
is nothing wrong in it. And it will be good to come from India
to Nepal to pay a visit to the land of Buddha who has been cunningly
claimed by India as India's son, which is not true. last517
The king of this country recognizes me as an awakened being.
But he thinks of himself as a man of great spiritual realization,
which he is not. It is very easy for him to be supported by his
puppets, his paid servants, who say, "Yes, you are a great
spiritual leader."
But if he recognizes me as an enlightened person, he should come
to see me at least. I'm a guest in his country and he should know
the tradition of the East. light20
The king of Nepal was ready for me to have my residence and
commune there, but the condition was that I should not speak against
Hinduism. Nepal is a Hindu kingdom, the only Hindu kingdom in
the world.
I refused. I said, "I never plan what to speak and what
not to speak. I cannot promise. And if I see anything wrong, then
it does not matter whether it is Hinduism or Christianity or Mohammedanism,
I am going to speak against it." socrat05
Just the other day an old man was asking me—he is the
private secretary of the king of Nepal—"I don't expect
that, in this life, I will be able to experience anything you
talk about."
I said, "Why? Why are you so discouraged? What I am talking
about can be experienced within a second. All that you need is
to listen to me carefully and just to make an effort. There is
no need to wait for another life. Perhaps you have been doing
it in your past lives too, and you are just repeating an old habit,
that it cannot happen in this small life. You are thinking, `Now
almost two-thirds is gone, one-third is left: how can I manage
such a big experience?'"
And as I talked with him and I gave him a meditation—to
just witness his breathing—I understood what the difficulty
was. He was not listening to me. While I was talking to him, giving
him a method, he was preparing in his mind what he had to say
after I stopped.
And as I stopped, he did not continue with what I was saying to
him. He immediately jumped to something which had no connection
with what was said to him. Just to give the appearance that it
was connected, he said, "Except for witnessing the breathing…I
have been sleeping very soundly—I don't have any dreams."
I had told him that if you go to sleep watching your breath,
you will wake up watching your breath. And that is an absolute
proof that you have got the method, you have got a grip on it—because
whatsoever is the last thought when you go to sleep, continues
to be there the whole night, and is always the first thought in
the morning. It waits eight hours.
So he said, "Except for watching the breath…. This
is my experience, that whatever thought I sleep with is the first
thought in the morning. Driving on a silent road in the faraway
parts of Nepal, I feel so overwhelmed with blissfulness that tears
come to my eyes and I have to stop driving because I cannot see."
I asked him, "Who has told you to do these things?"
He said, "No one. I have been trying on my own."
I said, "Then I can understand why the fear is there that
you are not going to make it in this life. Perhaps you aren't
going to make in this life. These are just fragments—you
don't know the whole. And you don't know how to put these fragments
together to make the whole.
"You have not been with a master. You are just doing—in
a haphazard way—anything that you may have read somewhere,
heard somewhere. But spiritual experience is an organic unity.
You need a man who has the vision of the whole before him. He
can give you the key from where to start, so you don't end up
with fragments here and there. They will not be of any use. They
will be simply deceiving you that you are on the path."…
Practically, the master is an absolute necessity. But remember
that the master does not own people. The master is not the master
of people; the master is the master of himself.
People are attracted to him because of his mastery. They are
not to be enslaved. If anybody is enslaving them—and that
is what your so-called religions go on doing—then that man
is pseudo, and he is going to destroy you rather than create a
new man in you.
So this is the basic indication of who a master is: he does
not enslave you. On the contrary he gives you total freedom. And
if you choose to do something, you choose. It is not being forced
upon you, it is your choice.
The master can make things available to you, but the choice
is always yours. And the master will not have any kind of superiority
over you. His emphasis will be continuously, "I am just a
human being—not a prophet, not a messiah, not a savior of
humanity. I am just a human being as you are. If there is any
difference, it is very little. The difference is that I am awake
and you are still asleep."
But the very phenomenon that you are asleep is an indication that
you can be awake. A dead man is not asleep, so he cannot be awake.
Being asleep or being awake is the same energy.
The perfect master convinces you that you are as capable as
he is of having all the experiences that can uplift you from the
ordinary, mundane world into a spiritual paradise, herenow. light15
Buddhism is a non-fanatic religion.
Just now when we were in Nepal—Nepal is a Buddhist country—the
chief of all the Buddhist monks used to come to listen to my lectures.
And I came to know that he was going round meeting ministers,
and the prime minister, and other important people and telling
them, "You should come. Don't decide by reading nonsense
newspapers. Come and listen to him."
He used to sit just in front of me—an old man—and
whenever I said something which was very close to Buddha's heart,
I could see that old man's head nodding. He was not doing it knowingly.
He was just so much in tune that he felt it; this was the purest
thing that he has heard. And I was not talking about Buddha; but
the taste he understood.
The whole day he was moving around Kathmandu, forgetting his
own work as president of the monks of Nepal. He was telling people
that they should come and listen to me, and saying, "Don't
be bothered what newspapers say. When the man is here, why should
you miss him?" And he brought many people by and by.
You cannot hope for this with a Hindu shankaracharya, or the
head of the Jaina monks, or a Catholic pope. It is impossible.
transm21
Meditation is the key. Why is it so difficult to live a meditative
life without your presence?
It is difficult because you have not yet been able to find your
own source of meditation.
Being in my presence you need not meditate. Just being in my presence,
a silence descends on you. Your heart has a different rhythm,
your being feels a tremendous contentment.
But this is just a reflection. You should not be deceived by
the reflection. Enjoy the reflection, let it penetrate as deeply
in you as possible. But this is only an example, that if it can
happen in my presence, why cannot it happen in my absence?—because
it is happening in you. I may be functioning as a catalytic agent,
but the source is within you; you just have to start trying it.
For example, you are in my presence and you feel meditation
comes so easily; in fact you need not think about it, it is there.
Just try sitting in your room. If it helps, remember me, visualize
me, that I am sitting in front of you, and allow the same experience
to happen again. You will be surprised; you don't know how capable
your consciousness is….
In my presence remember: meditation is easy because in my presence
love is easy.
So wherever you are, be loving.
Be loving to the people you are with, be loving to the sky you
see. Be loving to the trees you move by.
Just be loving—and whenever you are thrilled with love you
will find I am walking by your side, sitting by your side, that
my hand is in your hand—who says that I am far away? And
you will immediately have the proof because mediation will be
coming from all sides running, flooding you….
So whenever you feel that it is difficult to meditate without
me, remember my love for you, remember your love for me.
Love immediately destroys distances.
And you will find me as much present as I am here—or even
more. And once you have found it, then there is no problem: wherever
you are, meditation is your own, it is your own energy. light13
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